Portable data carriers are available on the market in different designs, recently also as bank cards or mass transit tickets, for example for so-called E-ticketing. An example of such data carriers is so-called Crystal Cards, in which the external form no longer corresponds to that of a classical rectangular credit/debit card. All these cards are multifunctional cards on which functions such as electronic payment are implemented. For this purpose, the cards are equipped with a chip module and an antenna to be able to communicate with an end device by a near-field communication. A near-field communication is for example a communication by the ISO/IEC 14443 standard protocol.
A Crystal Card is therefore a portable data carrier with which such transactions can be performed. The Crystal Card is unlimited in its external form, very compact, very easy to transport, and accepted by potential customers with rising popularity on account of its unrestricted external color design, surface design and shape design. Examples of such a Crystal Card are key pendants and digital coin carriers. The card form is unlimited.
For the individual color design, the card bodies of such portable data carriers are pasted with a printing ink layer on a polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, layer or as a kind of sticker. Alternatively, a printed plastic carrier paper is pasted as a printing ink layer on the card body. Subsequently, a clear glassy, transparent plastic layer, preferably an epoxy resin, is cast over the card body and the printing ink layer to protect the interior of the data carrier from external influences. The adhesive forces of such adhesives between card body and printing ink layer or between printing ink layer and plastic layer are so weak, however, that a delamination sets in between card body and printing ink layer or between printing ink layer and plastic layer, especially with plastic layers greater than 0.5 mm. As a result, the protective plastic layer falls off and the card body is unprotected from this time on.
Hence, it is an object of the present invention to show, or produce, a portable data carrier in which a sufficient protection of the card body is given.